Beyond Telepathy: The Classic Work on the Conscious Cultivation of Psychic Phenomena
Autor Andrija Puharich Introducere de Mitch Horowitzen Limba Engleză Paperback – 26 mar 2026
• Details the author’s scientific experiments with psychics on telepathic powers and psychic phenomena
• Explores how shamanism, yoga, and Indigenous spiritual traditions provide the means to consciously cultivate psychic abilities
• Analyzes the biological, physiological, and psychological conditions and stresses that lead to the development and control of telepathic and paranormal experiences
Neurologist Andrija Puharich pioneered research in psi phenomena in the 1950s and ’60s. This classic edition of that research provides profound examples of telepathy, clairvoyance, and mind powers that he recorded in labs and clinical settings. Puharich also draws on ancient spiritual practices to show how one might activate these abilities.
Connecting psychic phenomena to human physiology, Puharich recounts experiments he conducted with psychics in which observable activation of the parasympathetic nervous system resulted in measurable improvements in telepathic reception. He details his experiments on transmissive telepathy and how ESP and telepathy manifest in groups, and he hypothesizes that the ability to transmit thoughts and information is connected to adrenalin and related compounds.
Puharich examines what he terms a “mobile center of consciousness”—how the mind is separate from the body—and how this center of consciousness can access psychic powers and nonlocal knowledge. Beyond the lab, Puharich explored how shamanism, yoga, and Indigenous spiritual traditions provide the biological and physical means to consciously cultivate psychic phenomena and ecstatic states that enable extraordinary abilities.
Bringing these psi phenomena ideas into contemporary context is a new introduction by Mitch Horowitz, award-winning author of numerous books and host of the podcast Extraordinary Evidence: ESP Is Real.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781644116890
ISBN-10: 1644116898
Pagini: 320
Ilustrații: 9 b&w illustrations
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.39 kg
Ediția:3rd Edition, New Edition of the Classic
Editura: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Colecția Park Street Press
ISBN-10: 1644116898
Pagini: 320
Ilustrații: 9 b&w illustrations
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.39 kg
Ediția:3rd Edition, New Edition of the Classic
Editura: Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Colecția Park Street Press
Notă biografică
Andrija Puharich, M.D. (1918–1995), was a neurologist and prominent investigator of the paranormal. After completing his studies at Northwestern University medical school, he set up his own laboratory in Maine for the study of extrasensory perception (ESP). The author of The Sacred Mushroom, he was also a central figure in the early study of entheogenic mushrooms.
Extras
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION
Psioneer
Reintroducing Andrija Puharich’s
Beyond Telepathy
By Mitch Horowitz
Few parapsychologists have pursued field work with the dedication of Andrija Puharich (1918–1995). Born to Yugoslav immigrants, the Chicagoan was among the most innovative—and controversial—scientists in an already-controversial field. Not because his work lacked depth, but because it pressed boundaries, even among his colleagues.
In 1959, Puharich experimented with an entheogenic “Mushroom X” native to southern Mexico. His testing found that ingestion of the mysterious species, Amanita muscaria, appeared to heighten psi abilities. The iconic researcher showcased some of his results in 1961 with host-producer John Newland on the television series One Step Beyond. To accommodate Puharich, the paranormal anthology show, which premiered a year earlier than The Twilight Zone, made an unprecedented break in its fictional format. More still, Puharich’s effort, explored in his 1959 book, The Sacred Mushroom, quietly foreshadowed the psychedelic sixties and psychonaut adventures of LSD guru Timothy Leary (likewise interested in the psi effects of entheogens) and memoirist Carlos Castaneda whose tales of psyche-expanding mushrooms are challenged for veracity but never, among thoughtful readers, for poignancy and insight.
Among Puharich’s further innovations, highlighted in this book, are telepathy trials that study the sender versus receiver (the latter is the field’s more common focus). In decades immediately following the 1962 publication of Beyond Telepathy, a long-running series of telepathy trials—dubbed the ganzfeld experiments (German for “whole field”) pioneered by younger parapsychologist Charles Honorton—generated some of psi research’s most widely replicated and methodologically sound data, a fact affirmed even by career skeptics. This hard-won success, I believe, affirmed Puharich’s earlier instinct to dedicate himself to studying telepathy or mind-to-mind communication.
I do not have access to the author’s records and cannot verify his personal findings. As a longtime writer on parapsychology, I harbor questions, if not enmity, toward one of Puharich’s star subjects Peter Hurkos, a fee-charging Dutch psychic who relocated to Los Angeles. Hurkos engaged in at least one episode of charging, misinforming, and then abandoning an agonized California family who begged his help locating their lost and, it was later found, murdered six-year-old son. Literary journalist Stacy Horn details this horrendous episode in her invaluable history of modern parapsychology, Unbelievable. The journalist provides the aggrieved parties at least some modicum of closure that the soi-disant psychic never did.
I am more open toward a better-known Puharich subject, Uri Geller. The Israeli psychic evoked howls of pushback from skeptical voices after his infamous failure to significantly bend a spoon or perform other psychic feats live on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show in 1973. “Well, Uri,” Johnny concluded, “I don’t want you to feel bad about this tonight; the monologue doesn’t work every night either.” Contrary to cultural legend, however, a viewing of Geller’s twenty-minute appearance captures an arguable instance of psychokinesis (PK). As the camera zeroes in, Johnny, an avowed skeptic, acknowledges Geller’s spoon has “a slight bend in it.”
Around the time of Beyond Telepathy’s original publication, pioneering parapsychologist J. B. Rhine discontinued working with psychics at his Duke University Parapsychology Lab. The scientist felt, with justification I believe, that their hits prove too spotty. Rhine harbored deeply critical feelings toward Puharich for pursuing such ties. Psi, if it occurs at all, does not turn on and off like a water faucet. Hence, large-scale studies, replications, and meta-analyses (the last a method that Rhine devised) do more to establish empirical evidence, at least from the perspective of lab work, than dramatic “gets.”
Yet lab work, too, has limits, a fact understood by Puharich. Today, nearly every lab-based parapsychologist acknowledges that psi is profoundly abetted by some kind of emotional urgency or pathos, factors difficult (though by no means impossible) to summon or sustain in the lab. Recent to this writing, scholar of religion Jeffrey J. Kripal has done impeccable work tracking and validating (through time stamps, material evidence, and corroborations) field episodes of spontaneous or crisis-related psi. Louisa Rhine, wife and intellectual partner of J. B., likewise performed and published key work in this area.
Jeffrey—my own Professor X—wrote me in early 2022: “The notion that ‘passion is critical’ is embedded in the coinage of the term ‘telepathy’ or ‘pathos at a distance’ and not ‘indifferent neutrality at a distance.’ [F. W. H.] Myers, in fact, linked telepathy to eros.” And further: “My general sense . . . is that the parapsychological evidence is still statistical, and that the best evi- dence is experiential or spontaneous, as the Rhines knew well. I think the scientific method is a perfect method to make the psi effect go away or disappear. It’s like going to the North Pole to find zebras. The actual going there makes seeing zebras impossible.” Based on Puharich’s passion for field work, I can only suppose he would have heartily agreed.
I allow Beyond Telepathy to speak for itself regarding its case studies. I consider Puharich’s book an indirect update of the Victorian-age parapsychology field classic Phantasms of the Living, a two-volume study published in 1886 by Edmund Gurney, F. W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore. Phantasms explored 702 cases of spontaneous and crisis apparitions, such as psychical perception or the ghostly appearance of a loved one facing danger or fatality.
In a model of probity, its authors wrote: “We sometimes encounter persons who allege that they have repeatedly experienced some occult sort of perception of what was happening to friends or relatives at a distance. As a rule their statements have no force at all as evidence for telepathy; partly because we have no means of judging how far the idea of the distant event may have been suggested in some normal way; partly because the impressions have not been recorded at the time, and it is specially easy to suppose that failures may have been forgotten, while a lucky guess has been remembered.”
One case passing muster in the meticulously cataloged study—almost surely read by a young Puharich—is this account from central England:
When we were living at Leamington, I had a remarkable vision. I was sleeping with my sister Maria. Suddenly the curtains of our bed, at the side I slept, were undrawn, and Mr. L. appeared standing there. He said, addressing me by name, “My mother is dead.” I tried to persuade myself I had been dreaming, and Maria said I had dreamt it; but after a short time the same thing was done again, and the same announcement made. I was rather chaffed at breakfast because of the story I told. After breakfast I went into the drawing-room to practice. Presently I heard myself called, and I went out on the balcony to listen. It was the daughter of the man whom I had seen twice at night, and the grand- daughter of the old lady whose death had been announced. She was riding on horseback. She said, “Have you heard? My father is sent for, and my grandmother is dead!”
The percipient’s sister confirmed the events. These are the shoulders on which Puharich and other serious parapsychology field researchers stand.
I admire Puharich’s efforts in Beyond Telepathy to explore a “psi plasma” theory of ESP and telepathy, an effort distantly echoed in parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphic fields” theory, which posits exchange of information at the cellular level. I believe that parapsychology has done too little to theorize delivery mechanisms. Of course, it is easy to overvalue theory and mold data to fit cherished hypotheses. But, still, if one works within the Western scientific paradigm, theory remains critical.
Western science possessed primeval fossils decades before Darwin; but not until his theory of evolution did an orderly, bio- logic progression of life unify disparate information. Similar effort is overdue in parapsychology. Puharich demonstrated intellect and bravery—whether right or wrong in outcome—in laboring to fill this theoretical gap. (I venture my own layman’s effort in books including Daydream Believer, The Miracle Club, and Practical Magick.)
Anyone interested in parapsychology and extraphysical cognition should cheer the reappearance of this volume and Puharich’s earlier work The Sacred Mushroom, both available in classic editions from Inner Traditions. This heterodox intellect has not yet received his due in our culture. I believe that is about to change.
Mitch Horowitz is a PEN Award–winning historian whose books include Occult America, The Miracle Club, Daydream Believer, Uncertain Places, Modern Occultism, and Practical Magick. His podcast Extraordinary Evidence: ESP Is Real explores the history and key findings of para- psychology. Mitch plays himself in AMC-Shudder’s V/H/S/BEYOND, a 2025 Critics Choice Awards nominee for Best Movie Made for Television. His work is censored in China.
Psioneer
Reintroducing Andrija Puharich’s
Beyond Telepathy
By Mitch Horowitz
Few parapsychologists have pursued field work with the dedication of Andrija Puharich (1918–1995). Born to Yugoslav immigrants, the Chicagoan was among the most innovative—and controversial—scientists in an already-controversial field. Not because his work lacked depth, but because it pressed boundaries, even among his colleagues.
In 1959, Puharich experimented with an entheogenic “Mushroom X” native to southern Mexico. His testing found that ingestion of the mysterious species, Amanita muscaria, appeared to heighten psi abilities. The iconic researcher showcased some of his results in 1961 with host-producer John Newland on the television series One Step Beyond. To accommodate Puharich, the paranormal anthology show, which premiered a year earlier than The Twilight Zone, made an unprecedented break in its fictional format. More still, Puharich’s effort, explored in his 1959 book, The Sacred Mushroom, quietly foreshadowed the psychedelic sixties and psychonaut adventures of LSD guru Timothy Leary (likewise interested in the psi effects of entheogens) and memoirist Carlos Castaneda whose tales of psyche-expanding mushrooms are challenged for veracity but never, among thoughtful readers, for poignancy and insight.
Among Puharich’s further innovations, highlighted in this book, are telepathy trials that study the sender versus receiver (the latter is the field’s more common focus). In decades immediately following the 1962 publication of Beyond Telepathy, a long-running series of telepathy trials—dubbed the ganzfeld experiments (German for “whole field”) pioneered by younger parapsychologist Charles Honorton—generated some of psi research’s most widely replicated and methodologically sound data, a fact affirmed even by career skeptics. This hard-won success, I believe, affirmed Puharich’s earlier instinct to dedicate himself to studying telepathy or mind-to-mind communication.
I do not have access to the author’s records and cannot verify his personal findings. As a longtime writer on parapsychology, I harbor questions, if not enmity, toward one of Puharich’s star subjects Peter Hurkos, a fee-charging Dutch psychic who relocated to Los Angeles. Hurkos engaged in at least one episode of charging, misinforming, and then abandoning an agonized California family who begged his help locating their lost and, it was later found, murdered six-year-old son. Literary journalist Stacy Horn details this horrendous episode in her invaluable history of modern parapsychology, Unbelievable. The journalist provides the aggrieved parties at least some modicum of closure that the soi-disant psychic never did.
I am more open toward a better-known Puharich subject, Uri Geller. The Israeli psychic evoked howls of pushback from skeptical voices after his infamous failure to significantly bend a spoon or perform other psychic feats live on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show in 1973. “Well, Uri,” Johnny concluded, “I don’t want you to feel bad about this tonight; the monologue doesn’t work every night either.” Contrary to cultural legend, however, a viewing of Geller’s twenty-minute appearance captures an arguable instance of psychokinesis (PK). As the camera zeroes in, Johnny, an avowed skeptic, acknowledges Geller’s spoon has “a slight bend in it.”
Around the time of Beyond Telepathy’s original publication, pioneering parapsychologist J. B. Rhine discontinued working with psychics at his Duke University Parapsychology Lab. The scientist felt, with justification I believe, that their hits prove too spotty. Rhine harbored deeply critical feelings toward Puharich for pursuing such ties. Psi, if it occurs at all, does not turn on and off like a water faucet. Hence, large-scale studies, replications, and meta-analyses (the last a method that Rhine devised) do more to establish empirical evidence, at least from the perspective of lab work, than dramatic “gets.”
Yet lab work, too, has limits, a fact understood by Puharich. Today, nearly every lab-based parapsychologist acknowledges that psi is profoundly abetted by some kind of emotional urgency or pathos, factors difficult (though by no means impossible) to summon or sustain in the lab. Recent to this writing, scholar of religion Jeffrey J. Kripal has done impeccable work tracking and validating (through time stamps, material evidence, and corroborations) field episodes of spontaneous or crisis-related psi. Louisa Rhine, wife and intellectual partner of J. B., likewise performed and published key work in this area.
Jeffrey—my own Professor X—wrote me in early 2022: “The notion that ‘passion is critical’ is embedded in the coinage of the term ‘telepathy’ or ‘pathos at a distance’ and not ‘indifferent neutrality at a distance.’ [F. W. H.] Myers, in fact, linked telepathy to eros.” And further: “My general sense . . . is that the parapsychological evidence is still statistical, and that the best evi- dence is experiential or spontaneous, as the Rhines knew well. I think the scientific method is a perfect method to make the psi effect go away or disappear. It’s like going to the North Pole to find zebras. The actual going there makes seeing zebras impossible.” Based on Puharich’s passion for field work, I can only suppose he would have heartily agreed.
I allow Beyond Telepathy to speak for itself regarding its case studies. I consider Puharich’s book an indirect update of the Victorian-age parapsychology field classic Phantasms of the Living, a two-volume study published in 1886 by Edmund Gurney, F. W. H. Myers, and Frank Podmore. Phantasms explored 702 cases of spontaneous and crisis apparitions, such as psychical perception or the ghostly appearance of a loved one facing danger or fatality.
In a model of probity, its authors wrote: “We sometimes encounter persons who allege that they have repeatedly experienced some occult sort of perception of what was happening to friends or relatives at a distance. As a rule their statements have no force at all as evidence for telepathy; partly because we have no means of judging how far the idea of the distant event may have been suggested in some normal way; partly because the impressions have not been recorded at the time, and it is specially easy to suppose that failures may have been forgotten, while a lucky guess has been remembered.”
One case passing muster in the meticulously cataloged study—almost surely read by a young Puharich—is this account from central England:
When we were living at Leamington, I had a remarkable vision. I was sleeping with my sister Maria. Suddenly the curtains of our bed, at the side I slept, were undrawn, and Mr. L. appeared standing there. He said, addressing me by name, “My mother is dead.” I tried to persuade myself I had been dreaming, and Maria said I had dreamt it; but after a short time the same thing was done again, and the same announcement made. I was rather chaffed at breakfast because of the story I told. After breakfast I went into the drawing-room to practice. Presently I heard myself called, and I went out on the balcony to listen. It was the daughter of the man whom I had seen twice at night, and the grand- daughter of the old lady whose death had been announced. She was riding on horseback. She said, “Have you heard? My father is sent for, and my grandmother is dead!”
The percipient’s sister confirmed the events. These are the shoulders on which Puharich and other serious parapsychology field researchers stand.
I admire Puharich’s efforts in Beyond Telepathy to explore a “psi plasma” theory of ESP and telepathy, an effort distantly echoed in parapsychologist Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphic fields” theory, which posits exchange of information at the cellular level. I believe that parapsychology has done too little to theorize delivery mechanisms. Of course, it is easy to overvalue theory and mold data to fit cherished hypotheses. But, still, if one works within the Western scientific paradigm, theory remains critical.
Western science possessed primeval fossils decades before Darwin; but not until his theory of evolution did an orderly, bio- logic progression of life unify disparate information. Similar effort is overdue in parapsychology. Puharich demonstrated intellect and bravery—whether right or wrong in outcome—in laboring to fill this theoretical gap. (I venture my own layman’s effort in books including Daydream Believer, The Miracle Club, and Practical Magick.)
Anyone interested in parapsychology and extraphysical cognition should cheer the reappearance of this volume and Puharich’s earlier work The Sacred Mushroom, both available in classic editions from Inner Traditions. This heterodox intellect has not yet received his due in our culture. I believe that is about to change.
Mitch Horowitz is a PEN Award–winning historian whose books include Occult America, The Miracle Club, Daydream Believer, Uncertain Places, Modern Occultism, and Practical Magick. His podcast Extraordinary Evidence: ESP Is Real explores the history and key findings of para- psychology. Mitch plays himself in AMC-Shudder’s V/H/S/BEYOND, a 2025 Critics Choice Awards nominee for Best Movie Made for Television. His work is censored in China.
Cuprins
INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION
Psioneer: Reintroducing Andrija Puharich’s Beyond Telepathy
by Mitch Horowitz
THE ORIGINAL TEXT
BEYOND TELEPATHY
Foreword
1 The Telepathic Receiver and
the State of Cholinergia
2 The Telepathic Sender and
the State of Adrenergia
3 Telepathic Networks with Individuals
Serving as Unconscious Relays
4 General Extrasensory Perception
Networks Containing an Object as a Relay
5 The Memory Capacity of Objects
and the Impregnation of Such Objects
by Mind Action
6 The Dynamics of the Mobile Center
of Consciousness when Separated from
the Physical Body
7 The Mobile Center of Consciousness
Completely Independent of a
Living Physical Body
8 Shamanism: The Biology of the
Ritual of the Irrational
9 Yoga: The Psychology of Autonomy
for the Nuclear Mobile Center
of Consciousness
10 The Biological Foundations of Psi Plasma
11 The Physical Foundations of Psi Plasma
12 Summary of the Theory of Psi-Plasma Control
Epilogue: A Test of the Theory
Appendices
Bibliography
Author Index
General Index
About the Author
Psioneer: Reintroducing Andrija Puharich’s Beyond Telepathy
by Mitch Horowitz
THE ORIGINAL TEXT
BEYOND TELEPATHY
Foreword
1 The Telepathic Receiver and
the State of Cholinergia
2 The Telepathic Sender and
the State of Adrenergia
3 Telepathic Networks with Individuals
Serving as Unconscious Relays
4 General Extrasensory Perception
Networks Containing an Object as a Relay
5 The Memory Capacity of Objects
and the Impregnation of Such Objects
by Mind Action
6 The Dynamics of the Mobile Center
of Consciousness when Separated from
the Physical Body
7 The Mobile Center of Consciousness
Completely Independent of a
Living Physical Body
8 Shamanism: The Biology of the
Ritual of the Irrational
9 Yoga: The Psychology of Autonomy
for the Nuclear Mobile Center
of Consciousness
10 The Biological Foundations of Psi Plasma
11 The Physical Foundations of Psi Plasma
12 Summary of the Theory of Psi-Plasma Control
Epilogue: A Test of the Theory
Appendices
Bibliography
Author Index
General Index
About the Author
Recenzii
“When I first read Beyond Telepathy in the early 1970s, it struck me as a bold step forward: Dr. Puharich wasn’t arguing whether ESP exists—he was explaining how it works. In this landmark treatise, Puharich explores neurotransmitters, brain states, and Faraday cage experiments with leading psychics and even shamans, demonstrating that ESP operates outside known electromagnetic ranges. This book remains an essential classic for anyone serious about understanding our so-called sixth sense.”
"Anyone interested in parapsychology and extraphysical cognition should cheer the reappearance of this volume. This heterodox intellect has not yet received his due in our culture. I believe that is about to change."
"Anyone interested in parapsychology and extraphysical cognition should cheer the reappearance of this volume. This heterodox intellect has not yet received his due in our culture. I believe that is about to change."
Descriere
A new edition of the classic scientific study of psi abilities